


The Praetorium - Garlean PoV

by Big_Spicy_Garlean_Fucker



Category: Final Fantasy XIV
Genre: Child Soldiers, Death, Escape, Garlean PoV for the Praetorium, Garleans (Final Fantasy XIV), Gen, Gore, Other, Soldiers, The Praetorium, Trauma, Violence, War, msq
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-13
Updated: 2020-03-13
Packaged: 2021-02-28 23:08:07
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,342
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23125261
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Big_Spicy_Garlean_Fucker/pseuds/Big_Spicy_Garlean_Fucker
Summary: A young, unseasoned Garlean soldier is forced to face the realities of war. He doesn't do a very good job at it.
Kudos: 8





	The Praetorium - Garlean PoV

**Author's Note:**

> This isn’t canon, but I wrote it because I was bored. Lucius canonically survives the Praetorium in a much, much more traumatic situation. He is also a Centurion around that time. Leave a comment if you'd like me to write that!
> 
> Written in about 3 hours.

Lucius has never seen a dead man before.

Or a woman, for that matter, but he can hardly tell the difference looking at the mangled heap of organic matter lying in front of him. Crushed in an instant by a commandeered Reaper, only a pool of dark red mush remains of the soldier he’d been talking to just seconds prior. For a moment, he stares. He’s not quite sure what happened, or where it came from, or where the thing’s going after blasting a hole in the training room’s eastern wall. The Praetorium has been on high alert for hours, now – minutes in fact, though Lucius has little concept of time when under such terrible duress. He stares, plastered to the side of a thick ceruleum pipe, watching the procession of stolen Magitek traipse out of the room and onto the external walkway. Nobody notices him – they’re all dead, after all, though he doesn’t realize this at first. He stands there clutching his gunblade, a standard model given to all pureblood soldiers proficient with them that he’s named _Gaius_ , after his new Legatus. Lucius hopes to make him proud. He cries.

Nobody comes to save him, nor attack him for what it’s worth. A Miqo’te scurries out of the elevator on foot, far too preoccupied with catching up with his mounted comrades than cleaning up any leftover Garleans. Half the Castrum are conscripts, the rest a mix of sixteen-summer graduates from the Academy and freshly requisitioned backup. Four thousand dead. Four _thousand_.

Lucius holds his blade closer, the flat of it pressed against his chest and the point jutting out far past his left shoulder. He won’t cut himself with it, but he shouldn’t be holding it like this, either. His Decurion had told him off for his tendency to cuddle things when he felt upset – _you are a soldier, not a child. Act like it._

Lucius does not feel very much like a soldier anymore. He knows what he’s supposed to do – regroup, for there is safety in numbers, and they are Garlean, they are strong, and united they prevail. With their Magitek- the tape jerks, and the comforting propaganda he’s long since memorized drops into cold silence. Nothing but skipping fills the empty space between his ears, and he’s _still_ looking down at the cooling pile of flesh and bone coagulating at his feet. His head hurts, and his eyes are stinging. Uncomfortable pressure slices across his carbon fiber gloves. He loosens his grip on the blade only to grasp it by the barrel, slowly turning the weapon over in his hands. His left is still curled around the grip, finger right beside the trigger but not on it. He pauses.

_‘What am I doing…?’_

The blade falls, barely sweeping an ilm above the cold steel floor. He can’t hear a thing save the gentle rush of ceruleum through the pipe beside him. That, and the high-pitched whine of electricity he’s always found soothing. He presses his ear to the pipe – it’s warm, though he knows the ceruleum inside the cooling tube is boiling hot. He couldn’t blast it open with a bullet nor slice it in half, and frowns at the thought. Shouldn’t he be doing something, right about now?

There’s no-one around. Nobody to give him orders, and most certainly nobody to follow behind like a lost little pup. The Black Wolf is nowhere to be seen – though Lucius knows how to get to him, despite not having the right clearance to actually do so. He pats around his pockets for his ID card, and is about to head into the elevator when it _dings._ Before he can think to hide, the door slides up and out rushes a white-clad blur. No uniform. An _enemy_. Lucius shoots – he never misses – and his blade clicks. The figure promptly whacks his blade aside and takes him to the floor, scrambling to disarm him. It’s not a second later that they pause, strong fingers curled around his throat.

“…Seven hells.”

Lucius, already frozen in fear _–he can’t fight, he can shoot, it’s all he’s good for, he can’t fight-_ stares wide-eyed at the man too small to be Garlean, yet with a third eye just like his own sticking out of his sweat-slick forehead. His opalescent gaze glistens wetly, as do his parted, struggling lips. The man loosens his hold only to pin Lucius by the shoulders and stare into his eyes.

“Drafting _children_ , I can’t believe it…” He certainly _sounds_ Garlean, though his crisp accent comes muddled with the savage slur Lucius has heard quite a few times from Gaius’s Tribunii. With a heavy sigh, the man shakes his head. Thick tufts of silvery-white hair fall before his face. “You’d best stay put, boy, at least for another hour. It’s going to get messy.”

Lucius’s fine blonde brows draw together, creasing light wrinkles around his third eye. Why is a pureblooded man less than six fulms tall sitting on him, giving him orders? It’s better than nothing, he surmises, but he doesn’t like it. He doesn’t like _any_ of this. He wants to go home. The stranger’s face folds up momentarily and Lucius realizes he’s been thinking aloud.

“Get up.” The man hauls Lucius to his feet, avoiding the swing of his gunblade. “And don’t shoot me. I’m a civilian.”

“Civ…?” Lucius’s eyes shift a tone lighter with recognition. _Civis_ , he knows, are people of the capital not meant for military involvement. “Why… are you here?”

“I, uh.” Speaking common Ilsabardian now, the man scratches the back of his head. “I’m friends with Gaius. Name’s… Marques.”

“A code name…?” Lucius tilts his head to the side. He’s cold, and steps closer to Marques. Marques moves back. “Ah, if you’re friends with Lord van Baelsar, then…” He points his blade at the floor. “Please take me to see him!”

Marques raises a brow. “Er… I don’t exactly know where he is. What I _do_ know is--”  
“ ** _Please!_** ” Lucius sniffles, wiping his face with the back of his sleeve. “I… I don’t know what to do… I don’t know where my Decurion is, and I can’t contact anyone…” He pulls his sleeve back with his teeth and shows a dead communications device, strapped around his thin, pale wrist. “It- it’s not working.”

Marques cuts his gaze aside. “I don’t have time for this. Gaius is going to activate the Ultima Weapon, and it’s going to kill us all. Are you going to come with me, kid? You’ll be doing us all a favour if you kept that blade where it belongs and kept hush.”

Lucius nods, for there is little else he knows how to do when being directed by an older, more experienced man. “Uh huh.” He shoulders his blade and stands up straight, wavering on his feet. Marques merely looks at him and sighs. The lad’s barely come of age – he knows a pureblood when he sees one, and they rarely ever stay below six fulms in adulthood. He himself is an anomaly in that regard. What _is_ the Empire doing, sending mere children to the aether-sickening front lines of Eorzea?

“What’s your name?”

“Lucius,” says Lucius, while turning his ID card over in his pocket. “Oen Batiatus. I’m with… the eighth cohort.” The insignia on his shoulder says as much, and the carbon fiber cap he’s now fiddling with matches the standard-issue tunic all the XIVth footsoldiers wear. He peels it back a little, the slit for his third eye coming up into its proper position. “Where are we going to go?”

“This way.” Marques expects Lucius to follow him – the Empire does train obedience into their soldiers quite well – and makes for the external walkway. It’s a crisp, chill night outside, and strangely silent thanks to all the alarm systems having been disabled. Lucius wonders at that, and if someone couldn’t just turn them back on so everybody knew there was still danger around. Danger in the form of eight savages running amok through the Praetorium with Magitek Reapers under their control. He scowls as he thinks of those filthy, magical miscreants laying their untrained hands upon glorious Garlean technology. It just wasn’t right.

Several bodies lie upon the walkway, most of them in piles that look like they’d just fallen over and died, right in formation. Lucius struggles to keep his eyes forward even as his proprioception informs him of just how _many_ there are, and his hearing informing him of what kind of people-puddles he’s stepping into. The whole place _reeks_ of blood, even though they’re practically outdoors with plenty of clean-ish air to breathe. The nearby ceruleum fields and processing plant he’s grown used to, but this? This sharp, cloying scent of death and decay? He can’t quite fathom ever getting used to that. Marques doesn’t seem to like it much either, and ushers Lucius into the conveniently-placed, reaper-sized hole at the bottom of the walkway. Lucius whimpers at the veritable _mountains_ of dead he sees scattered across the floor. That’s a whole cohort, right there, and he doesn’t recognize any of the helmed, blank-faced dead. None of his close comrades, but his brothers in arms nonetheless. He says something, but Marques pushes him into the Magitek lift and turns his head by force.

“Come here. Don’t look.” He stiffens as the lift begins to go down and Lucius hides his face in his shoulder. The lad’s just short enough to be able to do so, but far too tall to bury himself in Marques’s thick chest. How _badly_ Lucius wants the man to hold him, to stroke his hair and tell him everything’s going to be okay. He has wanted nothing else since he joined the XIVth, and has gotten only derisive snorts from the higher-ups pure and savage alike. Lucius whimpers softly, shivering. “Keep it together.” Marques mutters, shifting away as the elevator shudders to a stop. “We…” The lights go out, and distant screaming penetrates the reinforced steel walls. “Eh?” He jabs at the controls in the dark, but nothing works. Lucius can’t hear the electricity anymore. He clings to Marques, who doesn’t appreciate it one bit. “Get off me, let me try to fix this…”

Lucius doesn’t move a single atom. After enough of Marques’s squirming and prodding, though, brightness fills the chamber and the elevator begins to move once more. It reaches the ground floor in a few seconds and Marques yanks Lucius by the arm, pulling him into a world of bright blue. The underground research facility practically vibrates with energy, and a distant clamor can be heard up ahead. Lucius, farsighted as he is, spots the group of colorfully dressed intruders sprinting away and immediately fumbles to reload his gunblade. Marques is already running ahead, desperate to try and catch up to them before they disappear. They’re vaulting over something and landing out of sight, while one fiddles with a nearby terminal. At the sound of approaching footsteps, they glance to where Marques is almost through the Laboratorium Primum and flick their hands up. A sheet of ice surges through the doorway and blocks it ten fulms high, leaving Marques to curse and splutter in frustration. Lucius can’t run nearly as fast as him and shoots at the ice, merely fracturing it a tad with a bullet whizzing past Marques’s head. He jumps, turning to glare back at Lucius who doesn’t seem all that fussed about their current predicament.

“Watch it! You almost took my ear off!”

“No I didn’t.” Lucius murmurs. “I never miss. What are we going to do?” He waits patiently for orders, expecting Marques to deliver him the solution he only needs to enact. Marques stares at him, thick white brows scrunched firmly down.

“I don’t bloody know, boy! You get through that and we’ll see.” Smacking his gloved fist against the ice, it fractures a little further and Marques winces. “Ow.”

“Oh, I can do that!” Lucius pokes his gunblade into one of the cracks and begins working at it, pushing through until he gets to the other side. All of a sudden, running steps echo off to one side and speed up the closer they get. There’s a loud, metallic _grunt_ , and the sound of fluttering cloth. “Ah! Someone’s there!” Lucius shoves at the ice with his shoulder and manages to break it down bit by bit, with Marques’s help. But when they reach the other side, little freezing fragments melting through their clothes, there’s not a single thing to be seen. Just a huge, yawning black hole leading deeper and deeper into the ground. Lucius approaches the terminal, inspecting its thorough state of disrepair. The whole thing’s been hacked off, leaving only a mess of wires sticking out of its base. Nothing remains but a slightly bent pole attached to the platform’s railing.

“This way.” Marques grabs his attention with a click of the tongue. “Tch, we have to move fast. You have ID on you?”

“I do!” Lucius hands it over eagerly, and Marques only sighs as he takes it in hand. “I hope Lord van Baelsar is okay.”

Marques bites his tongue. There’s a sliding door off to the left, which he plasters Lucius’s card to in hopes of getting it open. The door doesn’t budge, and the terminal beside it displays _CLEARANCE DENIED_. Marques would rip his hair out if he wasn’t afraid of balding. But he’s not one to give up in the face of stubborn technology, and simply cracks open the terminal using one of the many tools hidden within his belt. Lucius watches him work, messing with wires and circuits that look about as arcane to him as Magitek possibly could. He’s far better at breaking things than getting them to work. The door slides up, and Marques runs right up the stairs leaving Lucius to skitter after him, breathless after just two flights. They reach the top and Lucius practically collapses, doubled over and panting while Marques scopes out the hallway. Officers are running around in complete disarray, some shoving each other around while others yet struggle to contact their subordinates. The minute they catch sight of Marques, one of them raises their voice in alarm.

“WHO THE HELL ARE YOU?!” They’re all purebloods, administrative officers of the XIVth left scrambling without any semblance of leadership. Gaius is gone, Nero seems to have abandoned them, and the other two Tribunii are dead. All of the Pilii are, too. “And you! Soldier!” The blonde-haired officer marches up to Marques who’s now standing before a completely exhausted Lucius. “You’d better not be holding him hostage!”

Lucius lifts a hand, a pathetic semblance of a thumbs-up quivering at his fingers. “I, haah, I’m alright, aaghn… stairs…”

Marques nods. “I’m not holding anyone hostage. I need to see Gaius. Where is he?”

“Who do you think you are?” The officer, one Octavius quo Sattia, pulls a pistol out of his jacket and points it at Marques’s forehead. “Lord van Baelsar’s whereabouts are none of your business, savage. Even if you do speak our tongue…”

“Oh, for fucks’s sake.” Marques rips off his goggles, which had slid back down to cover his third eye as he’d run up the stairs. “Do I look like a bloody savage to you? Where’s Nero, is he around?”

“Gone,” says Octavius, “Just like every other spineless fuck- hey, who are you, anyway? How did you even get up here?” He glances to Lucius, who’s managed to gather himself enough to stand up straight and look somewhat attentive. “You! Report!”

“Sir!” Lucius automatically salutes. “His name is Marques, and he’s a civilian! We need to see Lord van Baelsar at once.”

“Lord van Baelsar just left like, fifteen minutes ago.” says another officer, poking his head out from one of the many rooms lining the hallway. “We’re currently undergoing evacuation procedures. We’ve lost eight cohorts already.”

Lucius blinks, and Octavius sees the strain in his face tighten considerably. Octavius has never lead anyone or anything before – he writes reports and analyzes data, and isn’t ready to die. But he does his best to keep things under control.

“Come here.”

Lucius obeys, striding up to stand before him at parade rest. Marques simply sets off down the hall to question anyone he can find, looking into the various offices with their doors flung wide open and panicked people stuffing things into boxes and briefcases. Octavius lets him go, but not until he’s ordered someone to keep watch on him, and not let him out of their sight. Lucius peers up at him doe-eyed and eager for instruction, quivering intermittently. Octavius glances down and then right back up.

“You can wait in my office. …Wipe your feet before you go in.” He points to a door, and while there’s no carpet anywhere for Lucius to clean his bloodied boots on, he at least tries to shake them off a bit. Octavius leaves Lucius on his own to go and question Marques, who by now has realized that Gaius is nowhere to be found and the Ultima Weapon is now in the hands of the Warrior of Light and Friends. Marques sits amidst the chaos with his head in his hands, almost grateful for the cacophony drowning out his tumultuous thoughts. _‘You can’t do a single thing by yourself, can you?’_

Octavius throws a bit of paper at him and it bounces off Marques’s head. “You, civilian. I don’t have the time to interrogate you now, but I’m willing to overlook your unauthorised entry on account of your pure blood. From which corner of Garlemald do you hail?”

Marques groans. “Central. You said you’re evacuating? Is that it, then, withdrawing from Eorzea and heading home?”

“That… would be the general idea, yes. We’re going to head for Baelsar’s Wall and from there meet with the XIIth. You may accompany us, but-”

Marques shakes his head. “No. I’ve business to attend to in these… savage lands.” He rises, running a hand back through his hair. His third eye stares at Octavius intently. “Look after that soldier for me. He shouldn’t be here.”

“Now, wait a minute…” Octavius reaches for him, and just as his hand makes contact, the building shakes. A second later and all the windows explode in a shower of glass, followed by an immense outpouring of heat. “OH, SHIT!” Octavius shoves Marques in his haste to escape, completely forgetting the soldier he ordered to wait in his office. Thankfully, Lucius has just enough initiative to peek into the hallway, where everyone’s heading for the one exit on the far side. He wants to wait because he’s been commanded to. But every muscle in his body is screaming to run. Together with Marques and the remnants of the XIVth, he hauls ass down the staircase leading to the Praetorium’s ground level. He has no idea where he is when they rush out into the open air, but everyone else seems to know where they’re going. Bright lights and shrieking magic have consumed the entire southern side of the Praetorium and combined with the sound of everyone running and screaming, it’s _horrendous_. Marques disappears almost the minute Lucius tries to find him, grasp his hand, _anything_. It seems he’s on his own again, but at least he’s not alone.

He has to keep moving. Crunching bones and desperate cries fill his ears as good, strong soldiers are trampled to death, others yet slashing with their gunblades as the crowd bottlenecks at the Castrum gates. Lucius’s gunblade isn’t going anywhere strapped to his back as it is, and he can’t bring himself to raise a hand against his own countrymen. He will learn how to, in time. But for now, they’re all he has, and united they form a nice big Garlean ball of desperation and might, rolling out across Mor Dhona and down into Gridania. It’ll take days for them to reach Baelsar’s Wall, weeks if they have to fight. But at least they’re alive.

For now.


End file.
